2011: What a great year!

2011 was literally a year filled with dreams coming true for me. I left my career in a corporate office to work for myself. I made lots of work. I spent three months farming in the south of France. I flew to California and put my toes in the Pacific Ocean. I learned so much and made friends at the Ladies of Letterpress Conference in Asheville, NC in August.  Most importantly, I'm continually working hard to pursue my dream of running my own letterpress & design company. As I look forward to 2012, it's a joyful thing to remember some of the stepping stones along the way from the past year:

With holiday cards & a craft sale under my belt, I began a line of Valentine's cards and joined Nicolette at her annual Valentine's flower stand:

I started doing custom design & printing for wedding invitations for friends and friends of friends. I discovered that I truly enjoy the collaborative process of working with brides to be to create something we both love.

Iris Café in Brooklyn Heights offered to carry my cards:

I was so excited when Amy Merrick hired me to design her website. We had a wonderful time shooting with photographer Bryan Gardner to turn Amy's concepts to beautiful images. Espresso, scones, flowers, good music, good people... such a fun day!

One of my proudest accomplishments of this year was spending countless hours this summer working on my website: www.maconyork.com! Converting magazine PDF files to web images + shooting all my stationery portfolio was quite an overwhelming task but I'm so glad to have it up. Special thanks to Christy-Claire Katien for helping me with this project.

I finally got around to printing business cards for myself, something a letterpress printer & designer definitely needs:

This summer my parents moved from our home near Savannah, Georgia up to the mountains of Chattanooga, Tennessee. My parents are incredibly supportive of my creative ventures and it was such a treat for me to print these moving cards for them:

As a Christmas & housewarming gift, I made my parents some custom coasters:

I finished the year out with two sets of holiday cards:

Finally, I'm so excited to announce that I'm now a proud owner of a Chandler & Price tabletop letterpress! I found it on eBay from a lovely couple in Louisiana. They shipped it freight and it arrived yesterday along with some extra goodies: furniture, packing paper, two quoins, and a quoin key! Woo hoo!

After spending the last 10 New Year's Eves out and about with friends, I opted for a quiet New Year's Eve this year. I stayed in and hung out with my Dad. We put violet liqueur and fresh lemon juice in our white wine for a fun little New Year's cocktail, had a great pork chop dinner, and listened to Jim Croce - a perfect way to end such a wonderful year.

Cheers to a beautiful next year!

xo Macon